


New Star

by Novantinuum (ChromaticDreams)



Series: Brandishing the Star: A Crystal Gem's Guide to the Universe (SU shorts) [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Brief description of dead animals, Canon Compliant, Gen, POV Rose Quartz (Steven Universe), Pre-Canon, Resurrection, Temporary Character Death, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23415121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChromaticDreams/pseuds/Novantinuum
Summary: Organic life is a fragile, fickle thing. This much is true. What's also true is how the death and resurrection of a humble lion was enough to make Rose Quartz reconceptualize everything.
Series: Brandishing the Star: A Crystal Gem's Guide to the Universe (SU shorts) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1491011
Comments: 7
Kudos: 68
Collections: Steven Universe Completed Recommended Reads





	New Star

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted within a drabble collection, but I really wanted to include it individually within my Steven Universe fic collection, so I'm posting it on its own as well.

Organic life is a fragile, fickle thing.

It’s like the blue supergiants, those massive rare stars pulsing with raw energy at distant corners of their galaxy. For the relatively short period they’re active they shine with a luminosity beyond almost anything else in the cosmos. She’s not ashamed to admit they’re still an enigma to her— raw, powerful light that’s transcended beyond concrete form, yet limitless in its beauty, in its innate capacity to physically mold the future of the cosmos around them. To inspire an infinity of stories from a species who devotedly traces their positions in the black of night. To instill a wordless awe within anyone who truly _sees_ them as they are, Gem or not.

And yet... _and yet._

Nothing lasts forever, not even the brightest starlight. It’s a fact of existence she simply can’t ignore, as much as she’d like to: the fact that those blue supergiants, despite their grandeur, have a set obsolescence date. Just like humanity. Just like every organism living here on this Earth. Because those stars, once they burn through their final reserves of hydrogen and helium at the very end of their oh-too-short lives, they can’t go on shining anymore. Instead their remains supernova and then collapse inwards, compressing smaller and smaller and smaller until— in terms of their cherished light now missing in her diamond sky— its almost as if they never existed at all.

Despite everything, Rose is certain she loves this world. Its sights, its experiences, its creatures. She’s certain she wouldn’t decide differently, if given the choice between Earth and Homeworld all over again. But as centuries pass around her like she’s standing still, as civilizations rise and fall just like the constellations they worship, as the humans she plays with— despite her attempts at healing— inevitably grow frail and die again, and again, and again... it’s becoming harder to stay out of the shadows. Harder to find but a hint of silver lining in all of this, in life’s helplessness to time’s decay.

After all, even the stars grow cold.

Sooner or later, every organic creature does too.

...

That is, that’s what she used to think.

* * *

The landscape is mocking her.

An azure blue sky meeting dunes of golden yellow. The brightest star— white, leering, singular— beating down wave upon wave of heat in the wilds of this untouched desert.

And then there’s her, the tiniest feature of this cosmic portrait. Pink. Helpless.

Ignorant.

Oh, so ignorant to the ways of this planet.

The disease strikes the entire pride with such silent ferocity that Rose doesn’t have the opportunity to heal them from it before they’ve all dropped dead. She swears she never intended for it to turn out like this. She only left them on their own for a a few days or so. That’s it! Barely any time at all. It’s what she’s always done in recent years, alternating between life at the Crystal Temple with her friends and her private meditations out here in the desert with her animal companions. When she warped away, there had been eleven of them, and once she returned...

Eleven bodies, laying lifeless and limp upon the sand. No blood, no signs of struggle. Just a heavy stench laying thick across the clearing. There’s flies buzzing around their picked-over carcasses, the state of their decomposition a record of the timeframe in which each of them died.

It’s as if in the matter of days they all simply succumbed to the inevitability of decay, buckled, with no witness.

Things might’ve been different in another context. As if her gemstone is secretly a sapphire instead, every river of possibility pummels her mind like a tidal wave. _If only she’d have payed more attention. If only this illness exhibited stark physical symptoms she would’ve been able to recognize before it was too late. If only she never grew so emotionally attached to these beautiful, free-roaming creatures in the first place._

A hoarse sob forcing its way to the surface, she collapses to her knees next to the most recently departed, the folds of her dress billowing out around her in the scratchy sand. She must have arrived mere minutes too late, because this lion’s body is still clinging to the last threads of warmth. She buries her face in his mane, griping thick strands of his fur in quivering fists as she openly dry sobs, messy and raw. He was the youngest adult male of the bunch, mischievous and aloof but so, so affectionate to the others. Affectionate to her, even if she didn’t deserve it. He was so beautiful in life, and so beloved, and now he’s gone. Because of her. Because once again, she failed to protect. Because she left for too long, treated these creatures as nothing but mere playthings she could leave behind and come back to at whim and didn’t fully appreciate the treasure she had until it was too late.

As she mourns his body, a deep, stabbing ache slashes through her form like one of Pearl’s spears, starting from the gem at her belly and radiating outward. Distantly, her thoughts wander to stories she used to hear back during the rebellion, stories of Gems becoming so distraught with emotion that they destabilized and dissipated their own forms. She almost hopes that’s what this is. That after every mistake, she too can just... stop. If only for a moment.

Liquid pools at the corners of her eyes. Eventually, the crushing despair becomes too much to hold inside.

Like a supernova bursting outwards from the heart of a dying star, she too falls apart.

The tears openly stream down her cheeks and off her chin, settling upon the lion’s cooling skin.

Moments pass like millennia.

And then...

Through her interwoven eyelashes, she catches flickers of a soft pink glow. It’s dim at first, merely a faint dwarf star on the edge of the endless horizon. But then hydrogen ignites, and the star grows ten times brighter. The glow’s radius expands. She gasps in awestruck wonder, glittering eyes opening wide. Pulling back, away from the still body to try and understand what is it that’s happening.

Beginning from the point at the lion’s mane where she shed her tears, a wave of light slowly washes outwards. It floods across his form, over limbs and fur, the air all around him sparkling with an aura of deep magic.

The light pulses... and then recedes. And what’s left in its wake is enough to make Rose Quartz reconceptualize everything.

He’s pink.

And breathing.

And _alive._

Beyond all odds.

The lion gives a heavy yawn, as if he’s merely woken up from a long nap. Lazily, he rolls over on his belly... an action that causes her breath to hitch in the sheer significance of it all.

Gently, she brushes her fingers through the lion’s soft pink fur, marveling at the muscles shifting underneath. He gives her a soft rumble in response. Wholly trusting, his eyes flutter shut as she continues to pet his belly, vies to prove to herself that he’s still here, still solid, still tangible, still inexplicably and wonderfully _alive,_ despite all odds. A laugh passes through her lips, breathy and hoarse.

Her cheeks are still damp with the tracks of the miracle that resurrected him.

Despite everything, despite Earth’s suffering, its illnesses, her own tears and anguish, Rose is certain she always loved this world. An unattached love, surrounding oneself with life yet inwardly, still observing from a safe distance. She always thought it was better that way.

But perhaps she’s wrong. Like her fears, like the selfish Gem that exists as a warning in her past, like every other ill-fated mistake she’s ever made.

Perhaps, she muses, the memory of grief and healing tears and wonder seared upon her mind... she’s never _truly_ understood what it’s like to love anything distinct from Gemkind before today.


End file.
